Tooling

[johnofwessex]

I know that there is a lot of discussion about 'Tooling' in particular tools that have been lost, destroyed or damaged.

 

Now, or so I am told, in the good old days, a toolmaker had to make a mould in hard 'tool' steel which then had a finite life.

 

These days however a CAD design can be used to make a new tool in 'softer' mild steel which can then be remade if needed.

 

I appreciate that the process is still expensive but it seems to suggest that so long as you have the CAD file you can recreate - at a cost the original tooling - or am I wrong

Edited March 16, 2019 by johnofwessex

[raymw]

Provided the cad file is in a format and on a media that can be read, then it should last for ever, with no wear. Software does not wear out.

[The Johnster]

The 'lost' toolings being discussed are mostly from the pre-CAD era, and replacing them would mean starting from scratch.  As many of them were incapable of producing mouldings to modern standards of detail and accuracy, and had not been designed to modern standards of cost efficiency, there is little point in replacing them and it is both better and cheaper to start again from scratch; you get a more realistic model that is cheaper to produce and more marketable.

 

I doubt anyone retains the skillsets required to design and build an injection mould machine without CAD any more.

[polybear]

The other issue is that Tooling is often designed to be used on a particular type of machine; naturally such machines become obsolete and are replaced by more modern examples which may not be capable of being used with older tooling.

[Ian Kirk]

On ‎17‎/‎03‎/‎2019 at 15:01, The Johnster said:

 

 

I doubt anyone retains the skillsets required to design and build an injection mould machine without CAD any more.

 

There are probably a few of us still around. Whether at 70+ we would want to set about making new injection mould tools is another matter. I think I could probably still do a wagon kit that would not compare unfavourably with Hornby Margate RTR  but who would want that when the current generation of RTR is so good. New tooling techniques have made it economically viable to cover a wider range of prototypes than ever before. Covering things that in the past might have been produced as kits by modeller/manufacturers.

I will be going to Richard Hollingworth's (Parkside) funeral tomorrow.  I am  reminded of a line in The Longest Day film spoken by Richard Burton as a fighter pilot "The problem with being one of the few is that we seem to  get fewer"

 

best wishes,

 

Ian

[mike morley]

On 16/03/2019 at 22:58, raymw said:

 Software does not wear out.

 

Oh yes it does!

[raymw]

14 minutes ago, mike morley said:

Oh yes it does! 

Oh no it doesn't

[mike morley]

A major concern of modern historians is that few people are bothering to make hard copies any more and that research material stored digitally 'fades' with age (there is a technical term for it. Can't remember what it is) and that every time the material is shared a few bytes are lost or corrupted. And that is before you take into account things like computer crashes, accidental deletions, hacks, malware etc.

What applies to historical research material applies to everything stored digitally, including tooling.

[Blue Max]

I remember going to an IBM seminar some years back where their Tech. guys stated that if any digital information is not stored in at least 3 different places then you should consider that it does not exist. They also suggested that any data should be backed up from a master copy every 3 months as a worst case scenario. 

[standardblue]

1 hour ago, mike morley said:

... and that every time the material is shared a few bytes are lost or corrupted. 

That shouldn't be the case - modern storage formats and transmission protocols use error correction and error detection techniques to prevent just this. Many file formats (and no doubt database and archiving systems) do similar.

 

Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to read RMWeb as it would just descend into a load of gibberish!

 

Mark

[raymw]

2 hours ago, mike morley said:

A major concern of modern historians is that few people are bothering to make hard copies any more and that research material stored digitally 'fades' with age (there is a technical term for it. Can't remember what it is) and that every time the material is shared a few bytes are lost or corrupted. And that is before you take into account things like computer crashes, accidental deletions, hacks, malware etc.

What applies to historical research material applies to everything stored digitally, including tooling. 

Hi Mike. What you say is correct. That was why I mentioned the other points in my original post. The software, the code, the  order of the 0's and 1's if you like, does not wear out. However the media on which it is stored, being a physical entity, will deteriorate. However, with sufficient knowledge and preparation, such media decay can be mitigated, and the software can be retrieved in its exact original condition.  It is, of course debatable if at he end of the day it is worth the effort, but at least there is an option. For physical plastic injection tooling, not so much of a choice.

[ejstubbs]

On 16/03/2019 at 22:58, raymw said:

Provided the cad file is in a format and on a media that can be read, then it should last for ever, with no wear. Software does not wear out.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot

 

"This is not a physical phenomenon: the software does not actually decay, but rather suffers from a lack of being responsive and updated with respect to the changing environment in which it resides."  That reflects the key phrase in your post: "Provided the cad file is in a format and on a media that can be read..."

 

I have portable media at home that I can't read any more - not because it's physically degraded but because the device for reading the media isn't supported on any currently supported OS.  In some cases the device uses a physical interface which is barely supported any more (parallel printer port, anyone?)  Other files that I do have on my current hard drive I can't read because the application that wrote them won't run under the OS that the computer now uses.

I know of (and have worked for) organisations which had archive data held on media that they knew they couldn't read any more even if they had wanted to.  It was apparently still cheaper/less effort to leave it "rotting" in one of Iron Mountain's repositories than to inventory it properly and weed out the junk.  One of the problems being that someone would have to agree that the data could be done without: which could mean getting agreement for an exception to the company's policy.  Worse, it could mean a tacit admission that the company was not compliant with industry-specific regulations on data retention.  No matter that the archive was unusable, so long as it was "there" it counted, apparently...

 

There are folks out there who maintain fleets of old hardware running old OSes specifically to try to help people who get themselves in to pickles with this kind of thing.

 

3 hours ago, Blue Max said:

I remember going to an IBM seminar some years back where their Tech. guys stated that if any digital information is not stored in at least 3 different places then you should consider that it does not exist.

 

That's about data availability, and recovery in disaster situations.  Not to diminish that as an issue, but it's not the same as creeping data obsolescence caused by the progress of technology.

Edited March 19, 2019 by ejstubbs

[raymw]

fwiw, you can buy, for not much money, parallel to usb interfaces, but may not work with your particular requirements. Not all // printer ports were equal. The progress of technology... The major problem is probably folk jumping onto the latest and best, without really thinking about it. It's still possible to read paper tape, from 60 odd years ago, you can read it by simply looking at the holes! Magnetic tape, not so easy, but storage for mag. tape much cheaper. Anyway, it's really a question of whether its a cost benefit to keep the original design, or if in ten years time/whenever, it is realised that the original design was rather crude, and time for a remake anyway. The cost of machining a cheaper, softer material, may be more or less the same price as machining the preferred material.

Of course, it also depends on what the cad file actually is. It should be of the full size item. Then you need to scale it, and make adjustments for working clearances etc, and moulding requirements in the model. Then break that down into the various machining methods for the various mould parts, then generate the machining code, then you may eventually be able to cut the metal. The actual cost saving, if any, in machining a softer (cheaper?) material is only a small part of the overall cost of repeating a mould. in the short term, then most likely can repeat straight from the machinining code - if you have the same machines...